Issue: Changes to Disability Compensation Program/Va Rating Schedule

ISSUE: CHANGES TO DISABILITY COMPENSATION PROGRAM/VA RATING SCHEDULE

BACKGROUND: Congress created the Veterans Disability Benefits Commission (VDBC) in 2004 to review, among other things, whether disability compensation benefits were “appropriate”. The VDBC began meeting in May 2005. Over the next 30 months it held 55 days of hearings, listened to hundreds of witnesses, interview over 20,000 veterans and survivors, surveyed thousands more VA and veteran service organization employees, commissioned two Institute of Medicine studies and the Center for Naval Analysis to conduct original research in a number of pertinent areas. In October 2007 it made 113 recommendations, the bulk of which pertain to compensation benefits.

In early 2007 the President created the President’s Commission on Care for America’s Returning Wounded Warriors, headed by retired Senator Bob Dole and former Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala (Dole/Shalala), to make recommendations for the correction of problems reported at the Army medical facility at Walter Reed. In July, 2007, after approximately four months of study, the Dole/Shalala Commission made a number of recommendations addressing treatment of combat injured service members. In addition, it recommended the total elimination of the current compensation program administered by VA.

The most striking differences between the two set of recommendations are these:

Veterans Disability Benefits Commission / Dole/Shalala Commission
Disabilities / No change to current policy that disabilities arising coincident with service, whether from combat or otherwise, should be compensated the same. / Would create different benefits for disabilities acquired during combat. Non-combat disabilities would be paid less.
Length of Payment / Once service connection is granted, payments would continue unless the disability improved. / Compensation would be delayed while new veterans received a new transition benefit. Compensation would continue only until “retirement age” to be replaced by Social Security.
Tax Liability / Tax free (current policy) / Compensation subject to FICA tax.
Review Examinations / No change from current policy which allows VA to decide when to order a review examination. Currently, only ordered when improvement is possible. / Require review examinations of all disabilities every 3 years.
Quality of Life Payments / After research, award additional payments if disability causes impairment of quality of life. / Same, plus: quality of life payments are only available to combat-related injuries.
Schedule of Rating Disabilities / Create a permanent Advisory Committee independent of VA to oversee the revision of VA rating schedule. This was based on an Institute of Medicine Study. / Replace rating schedule with new, undefined, schedule created in 6 months by VA.
Individual Unemployability (IU)
(IU is awarded to a veteran who is 60% or 70% service connected and whose service connected disability precludes gainful employment.) / Update the rating schedule to ensure that disabilities that are severe enough to preclude employment are evaluated 100%. This would lessen the number of grants of IU but not eliminate it. / Eliminate IU

VFW Position: VFW believes that the current compensation program is basically sound. The rating schedule must be updated and kept current, but in a sound, methodical and appropriate manner. The foundation of the compensation program is time tested and solid. We oppose modification of basic concepts and long standing policies. The recommendations from the Dole/Shalala Commission would terminate the current program and substitute an undefined, untried and unsubstantiated program in its place. The VFW opposes the Dole/Shalala Commission recommendations with respect to VA’s compensation program in favor of those by the Veterans Disability Benefits Commission which recommends the establishment of procedures for the scientific, medical, methodical and deliberative renovation of the rating schedule.

DISCUSSION POINTS:

 Over 30 months, the Veterans Disability Benefits Commission studied, discussed, debated and deliberated the problems and policies that surround the VA disability compensation program. It recommended keeping the most basic concepts while encouraging the methodical and deliberate review and modification to correct known problems.

 The VDBC would take the time to repair the rating schedule. Adopting the recommendations of the Institute of Medicine, the process would be open to the light of public scrutiny. The Dole/Shalala Commission would throw out the rating schedule and replace it with another, crafted in the bowels of a bureaucracy in as little as 6 months.

 The VDBC recommendations continue one law for all veterans. The Dole/Shalala Commission would institute a new program for new veterans, dividing the veteran community into different groups, old and young, combat and non-combat. This reinstitutes a concept repudiated by Congress over 30 years ago which would pay veterans with identical disabilities different compensation.

Prepared by: Gerald Manar